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Old December 11th 12, 09:22 PM posted to alt.rec.bicycles.recumbent
Dave Head
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Posts: 86
Default Twitchy Recumbents?

On Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:17:59 +0000, kimble
wrote:

On 10/12/12 21:52, Dave Head wrote:
Bought a used Bacchetta Giro. This bike is "twitchy", hard to ride in
a straight line. Maybe I'll get used to it, but I probably won't pass
30 mph no matter how much downhill I find, 'cuz its really scary. My
buddy, that rides 1000's of miles on DF's, rode it and it scared him
too...


Odd. On the one occasion I tried a Giro (that was far too big for me,
so I was slouching down in the seat and pedalling with tiptoes), I found
it to be astoundingly stable, even at pedestrian speeds.

If it's your first time on a 'bent, you need to get used to how they
handle. It's different to a DF because you can't move your bodyweight
around to tweak the balance - it all has to come through tiny movements
of the bars.

A few hours of practice at following lines and steering round obstacles
at low speeds in the local park did me a world of good when I first got
a recumbent. Once you're confident at that you can do hill starts and
emergency stops. Once you've got that sussed, it's just a matter of
mileage. High speed will take care of itself.

Oh, and keep the gears low - the wobble becomes worse if the pedalling
cadence gets too close to the wobble frequency. Remember you can't
swing your body around to compensate like you do on a DF.


(ObSillyQuestion: the forks aren't on backwards, are they?)


Thanks for the advice. I'll stick with it. As to the forks, I just
bought it used from a bike shop that is a dealer for Bacchetta, so I
highly doubt it.

Dave Head


Kim.

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